Thomas McKeown was a rhetorically powerful critic, from the inside, of the medical profession's mid-20th-century love affair with curative and scientific medicine. He emphasized instead the importance of economic growth, rising living standards, and improved nutrition as the primary sources of most historical improvements in the health of developed nations. This interpretation failed to emphasi...

Investments in one’s health require a comparison of the potential benefits and costs of providing either preventive or curative care. While preventive care lowers the probability of falling ill, and is often less costly than curative treatments, it does not provide full insurance against illness. An advantage of curative treatments, while more expensive, is that they do not requiring up-front i...

OBJECTIVE To estimate the total domestic health expenditure in Hong Kong between fiscal years 1989/90 and 2001/02, with breakdown by financing source, provider, and function over time. METHODS The standard health accounting methods as per the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development System of Health Accounts guidelines of 2000 were adopted. RESULTS Total domestic health expend...

BACKGROUND There has been an increasing availability and accessibility of modern health services in rural Bangladesh over the past decades. However, previous studies on the socioeconomic differentials in the utilization of these services were based on a limited number of factors, focusing either on preventive or on curative modern health services. These studies failed to collect data from remot...

Cancer chemotherapy provides variably effective treatment for the majority of forms of human cancer and curative treatment for some 12 categories of cancer. Curative treatment is defined as the proportion of patients who survive beyond the time after which the risk of treatment failure approaches zero, i.e., the disease-free survival plateau. This progress has resulted from a closely integrated...

O ral health has been recognized as a basic human right by numerous dental and public health organizations internationally. Yet more than 70% of the world’s population, mostly in lowand middle-income countries, are in need of appropriate and affordable oral health care.1 Some factors that contribute to poor oral health include a lack of resources, oral hygiene habits, oral health education and ...

background tradition is a part of people’s culture that can influence the health care. it is, therefore, necessary to identify the habits that change the health behavior of people. objectives in this study, we aimed to spot the traditions affecting maternity cares in the rural areas of qazvin province, iran. patients and methods a qualitative approach (ethnographic research) was applied. data w...

OBJECTIVE To critically review the advantages and disadvantages of selective versus comprehensive Primary Health Care (PHC) approaches as a strategy towards improving health in the developing world. DATA SOURCES Review of literature on PHC. DATA SELECTION Relevant papers from western and developing world literature. DATA EXTRACTION Search of Pub-Med, WHO/UNICEF reports, and relevant publi...